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German Book Publishers Cool To E-Book Market
Now that the Kindle is being actively marketed in many countries outside the US, reader
rsmiller510 sends in his piece up on DaniWeb about the skepticism in Germany about the whole e-book phenomenon. A major difference from the US book market is that in Germany, book prices are regulated in an effort to protect authors, publishers, and small booksellers. As a result, publishers don't issue electronic versions of their books until the paperback edition comes out, up to 2 years after the hardcover — and then they sell the e-book for the same price as the lowest-cost paperback. An article on e-books in Spiegel.de notes a survey taken recently for the Frankfurt Book Fair, which found that "only one in 12 Germans has a clear idea about what an e-book is, and seven out of 10 of them would prefer a printed version over a digital one." 65,000 e-books were sold in Germany in the first 6 months of 2009, vs. almost ten times that number bought per week in the US, in what is still a small niche of the overall book business.
Umm, no. RTFA. 65,000 in six months in Germany versus 600,000 per week in the USA. Even accounting for population differences, the difference is about 120:1.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Here's the deal: Yes, Germany and Austria have a regulated market for books in German (only!), meaning no price-based competition as the publishers set a binding minimum retail price with only a few exceptions like going-out-of-business sales, damaged books and stuff, but the principle remains. Amazon may throw in free shipping, but apart from that must not undercut brick-and-mortar stores. Go figure...
That said: the prices are set by the publisher. There is nothing to prevent them from having different prices for different editions. Just as a hardcover costs more than a paperback, an ebook could be even cheaper. Their call.
What about academic publishing? Textbooks are now ridiculously expensive, and I don't see any benefits to society from this particular healthy ecosystem of independent local bookstores. On the contrary, these excessive costs are making education more difficult to obtain, which is a detriment to society.
The plethora of small academic book stores (such as the local College or University bookstore) with no resulting bargaining power against the largest (or any other) academic publishers is a contributing factor to this problem.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
That's not really the same thing at all.
The Frankfurt Book Fair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Book_Fair) is an ancient and massive trade fair. Today it's largely a place where publishers get together to work out trade deals. For instance if a German author+publisher wants his book translated and sold in the states. Tons of business generated here.
Secondly, from the sound of the D.S. article, the survey was commissioned BY the Fair, not taken of random browsers AT the fair. Could still be biased, but I don't see what they would gain? The fair is about business.
You seem to have completely missed the next sentence, which states that:
Sorry, but your gut is pretty severely contradicted by the actual facts. And "I hear that all the time" is not a reasonable basis for making conclusions, as people tend to surround themselves with similar people. About half the people I know use Linux, but it'd be absurd for me to thus conclude that Linux's marketshare in the general population is anywhere near that high.
Thanks... I completely missed the 6 month vs. 1 week distinction.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Any technology that does not have this [e-ink] is simply a non-starter for most people. This is the SINGLE feature has allowed the ebook revolution to begin, period.
It looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I love e-ink as much as the next person but it is NOT the most important feature of e-books. It's not even fourth or fifth on the list. You can get all of the paper-friendly advantages of e-ink just by ... printing the book out on paper. Printers are old technology.
The ebook revolution coincides with e-ink in terms of timing, but that's just because it took computers this long to catch up to the point where ebooks are becoming useful. Before a couple of years ago, google books did not have every book, laptops were bulky and heavy, disk space was more expensive, and of course less content was available. I should also mention, though, that if you consider niche categories like academic publishing, rather than the mass market, electronic journals already became dominant several years ago, because PDFs are so vastly superior to paper for research work.
I've used both eink and LCDs. I have average eyes (neither great nor poor). I find backlit LCDs perfectly acceptable. Most of the eyestrain from LCDs comes from the low resolution of monitors, and from sitting upright at a desktop staring straight at a fixed location for hours on end. The low resolution is greatly mitigated by subpixel antialiasing (which some people apparently hate, although I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would hate it). Get a PDF reader that supports subpixel antialiasing for fonts. Couple that with a book-sized laptop (again, only recently available) and there's no great visual advantage to e-ink displays. E-ink of course wins on battery life, but backlighting has its advantages too; for example, it's easier to read in the dark, or in low light.
The Frankfurter Buchmesse isn't just a "book fair". It's the largest publishers convention in Europe - runs for a week, and is only open to the general public on the last weekend. Calling it just a "book fair" is like calling CeBIT a computer fair or SF ComicCon a comics fair.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.